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To start with, if the game itself fails to dissuade the player from taking every item in every room then not doing so should only be a factor of the player's available time. If you want to "play a character" who doesn't steal, but the game never ever punishes you from picking up items in people's homes, then it's bad game design that fails to accommodate that particular play style. On the other hand, there have been loads of CRPGs in the history of the genre that punish you for stealing items. Many of them have NPCs that sound alarms or turn hostile, others reduce virtue or karma scores. Some reduce your reputation with various factions, while some have strict time limits that discourage searching through every single container.

Another point to make, specifically with Deus Ex, is that eliminating all those lootable items hidden away in containers will reduce the use of the lock picking and electronic skills. One of the key benefits of those skills is to reduce the amount of lock picks and multi-tools required to break in to places. Sure, they can still be useful during the non-optional parts of missions, but the game makes a point to supply you with alternatives so that you don't ever have to use them. And not only that, there's plenty of lock picks and multi-tools around to last you through the "vital" sections of the game. It's when you dive into those optional areas for loot that the electronic and lock picking skills become useful and beneficial.

On the topic of "leveling up", no, you don't need to strictly level up in an RPG. However, you do need to be able to define your character in another way, ordinarily through a character creator at the start of the game. The problem with this method is that the player can't learn the usefulness of various attributes and skills and adapt their character accordingly without restarting the game. Leveling up provides the means to learn about the game and grow a character in a decent way. Of course, in a perfect game where every skill is useful and every combination of skills results in a valid play style, a pure character creator system without leveling up would be just as good from both an RPG perspective and the player's perspective. However, no game has come close to this and so having leveling up is the best we can hope for right now.

You did mention something about getting experience for doing things the hard way, and I agree with you that this sucks. You should be rewarded similarly for killing everyone, playing diplomatically, and stealthing through a level. I'm all in favour of rewards for different play styles. Perhaps even different rewards catered to those play styles. Completing a quest in a stealthy way will reward you with a something useful for stealthy characters etc. Deus Ex's system of rewarding skill points for exploration is pretty bad if you ask me. Probably the worst aspect of the entire game.

To start with, if the game itself fails to dissuade the player from taking every item in every room then not doing so should only be a factor of the player's available time.

Pretty much. 'Course, there are bad and easily-exploited mechanics for trying approximate the consequences of theft. The "karma" mechanic in the latter-day Fallout games comes to mind and the "stolen" tag in Morrowind and Oblivion are equally bad, because they both assume an omniscient deity who knows who owned what you pilfered and more or less informs the entire world of it instantly.

They're poor substitutes to a guy coming in, noticing stuff is missing, and putting two and two together when he sees you down the street wearing his shoes and selling his stereo. But I still think the theft thing is a subset of the fact that every merchant in the world is selling things to you at a 1000% markup.

NalanoH. Wildmoon
Director of the Friends of Nalano PAC
Attorney at Lawl
"His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy." - Woody Allen

Well consider a scenario where you have three ways to continue through a map. You can:

A. Fight through some enemies blocking a path, gaining XP through doing so
B. Pick/Hack a locked path, gaining XP through doing so
C. Find a well hidden unlocked path through some exploration, maybe an air vent, maybe something else.

Why shouldn't the player be rewarded some XP for taking that option as well?

I agree just being given XP for randomly coming across air vents all the time doesn't really make sense, but if the levels are well designed the player shouldn't be doing that anyway.

Because 95% of the time (ignoring those times where augmentations are needed to get to places) the exploration experience can be gained without any test to the character's skills and abilities. In other words the character is rewarded for something the player can do on his own, without the involvement of the character. Picking locks, hacking and killing enemies tests the character's skills in lock picking, electronics and weapons. There's a fundamental difference.

Now, if exploration experience can only be gained after using skills and augmentations such as swimming and super jumping, the situation would be a whole lot better and make far more sense. If only a character with a high swim skill or aqualung can reach a place which grants exploration XP then you've tested the character in doing so. If you only need to find a vent to get it then how is the character being tested?

Now, if exploration experience can only be gained after using skills and augmentations such as swimming and super jumping, the situation would be a whole lot better and make far more sense. If only a character with a high swim skill or aqualung can reach a place which grants exploration XP then you've tested the character in doing so. If you only need to find a vent to get it then how is the character being tested?

Would a system of scalable XP rewards work well here? Taking your swimming example; characters with more ability, capable of reaching more distant locations receive a higher amount of XP compared to Joe Everyman who can swim maybe the length of a pool before drowning. Make the more obscure areas that require greater (character) skill offer the greater reward. They shouldn't get 10,000XP for finding the lobby.

Obliv had its problems, but the core idea of "practice=improvement" is solid, and it surprises me that nobody else (as far as I know) has really done it. Although XCOM and friends did, now that I think about it.

What? You think that The Elder Scrolls was the first CRPG in which you level up through practice?

Now, if exploration experience can only be gained after using skills and augmentations such as swimming and super jumping, the situation would be a whole lot better and make far more sense. If only a character with a high swim skill or aqualung can reach a place which grants exploration XP then you've tested the character in doing so.

I'd so play a game that was nothing but this, and a compelling environment.

Would a system of scalable XP rewards work well here? Taking your swimming example; characters with more ability, capable of reaching more distant locations receive a higher amount of XP compared to Joe Everyman who can swim maybe the length of a pool before drowning. Make the more obscure areas that require greater (character) skill offer the greater reward. They shouldn't get 10,000XP for finding the lobby.

That would work only if you do the same for all different play styles. For example, killing a very difficult batch of enemies that are only killable with a high specialisation in combat skills and augmentations should reward you just as heavily as exploration that requires almost maxed out swimming and aqualung combined.

Another way would be to just tie certain XP rewards to each other. A vent that bypasses three guards may be worth more or less than killing all three, but taking the vent nullifies the XP from killing them, and killing each of them nullifies a third of the vent XP.

Such a terrible idea. Completing that section will always net you the exact same experience, however you do it. So why complicate the level design? Why not just reward the experience once after getting past those three guys? Use the vent, get the experience. Kill the guys, get the experience. Kill the guys and go through the vent, get the experience only once.

That would work only if you do the same for all different play styles. For example, killing a very difficult batch of enemies that are only killable with a high specialisation in combat skills and augmentations should reward you just as heavily as exploration that requires almost maxed out swimming and aqualung combined.

Sure, I was only giving one example. I'd add that the system should limit the player to prevent him/her from OCD'ing the game to max every style in the name of not missing content while basically creating Superman/woman. You can always play the game again as someone else.

That's a good point. You don't want to curtail experimentation or playfulness. I think it can be worked with though. Two solutions come to mind:
1 - Maybe if it was a significant XP bump when you performed tasks you'd prepared for, but you still get some reward for performing other skilful actions, so your playstyle directly determines your character's abilities without boxing you completely into one style.
2 - Maybe there could be a separate skill for "Improviser", which enables you to change your mind about which skills'll earn you XP on the fly, or which rewards you for using skills beyond just the ones you'd designated as those you intend to improve.

I'm sure there're other (better) ways of promoting your style with that spin on XP-rewards though.

Why bother with all this? All you seem to want to do is grant every single player the same amount of experience no matter what he does. Why not just give a fixed amount of experience at the end of each mission? Performance related experience is almost always a bad thing because bad players can start lagging behind without being able to catch up. It's why the vast majority of RPGs give experience for completing tasks and not for how well they are completed. If you don't do well on a mission, get less experience and find the next mission even harder because of it, there's an even greater chance you'll get less experience on that mission too. You'll then fall into that vicious cycle that you might not be able to climb out of.

Originally Posted by sinister agent

It's a good point. You'd need to either provide a strong impetus to stick to a plan (which might just mean it's extra-frustrating to have to do so or lose out), or balance it with some kind of consolation prize for not doing so. Tricky.

I think removing XP altogether is a good start, though. That way you could have the 'how I will approach this' system linked with tangible or character/plot/dialogue rewards instead, so it'd feel like less of a straightjacket - I can picture it working with you telling a support character or ally how you'd approach, and how closely you stick to the plan affecting the relationship and/or what they're willing to do for you. A liiiittle bit like Alpha Protocol, only with more emphasis on your desires rather than second guessing what will please the NPC - say your handler would be happy whatever you do, as long as you stick to your word.

You'd also be defined by how well you can do something, rather than just by what meaningless number is next to your name.

Sorry mate but that's not an RPG you've described there. You're basically saying "what if Deus Ex has no RPG elements?"

Why bother with all this? All you seem to want to do is grant every single player the same amount of experience no matter what he does. Why not just give a fixed amount of experience at the end of each mission? Performance related experience is almost always a bad thing because bad players can start lagging behind without being able to catch up. It's why the vast majority of RPGs give experience for completing tasks and not for how well they are completed. If you don't do well on a mission, get less experience and find the next mission even harder because of it, there's an even greater chance you'll get less experience on that mission too. You'll then fall into that vicious cycle that you might not be able to climb out of.

No, what I want to do is simulate the real-world phenomenon of "If I practise and study something, I acquire the skill to do it". And I want to do this by aligning my growing skill at the game with my character's growing skill in the game.

That does mean I'd want to reward doing an action well, not just reward the attempt. To me, the real relationship at play here is player-to-game, not character-to-world. If I can't play the game well, then my character loses out on XP. If my character loses out in XP, then I find the next level even harder to pass. Yes. That's good. I don't want to be able to make it to levels I don't have the appropriate player-skill for.

The XP facet of the discussion is pretty interesting, but my favorite part of the original post is that whole point about acting like a normal person, and how it's pretty weird for the head of security to spend his time breaking crates for soy food (or whatever). I have been playing through DX1 recently and for the first time ever, I decided to be largely straightforward. Even when I'm sneaking, I sneak toward my objectives instead of acting like the Lewis and Clark of high-security office buildings.

And you're right, it's hard to stick to that idea of acting in anything like the same way a real JC Denton would act. Sidequests have always had that problem of making the protagonist seem like an aimless hobo even when his killswitch is running down; and yet I love sidequests. =)

In terms of Quest Design, DX1 usually does a good job of not forcing you to act like an obsessive collector to get the best payoff. But sometimes the good quests are slightly ruined by the Environment Design encouraging this "Omniburglar" mentality (omniburglar...awesome word, that). For example:

In Paris, there is a house belonging to an out-of-town arms dealer, and it's full of nice and relatively rare things. There is also a "quest" for it, where if you kill some guy, another guy will tell you about the house so you'll know it's worth breaking in to. I think that's how it goes.

The thing is, you have already broken into the house. Of course you have, if you're playing optimally. You broke into that house because it was there, because even if it only has soy food in it, you need to *know*. And you know it'll be a good house to break into, because the door is strong; and of course nobody on Earth buys a strong lock unless it's to give JC Denton a good diversion. So when the guy gives you the tip about the arms dealer, you start to realize that if you were a *normal* person who doesn't eat up every row of offices or houses like a corn-on-the-cob, it would have actually been a really great tip. It would help you locate a useful hotspot in the midst of a normal city.

It's not all just a kleptomania problem, though that's the most noticeable case of weirdness. But as has been said, talking to EVERYONE you see, about EVERYTHING you can think of, until they stop talking to you altogether, is weird. And crawling around in EVERY sewer and dark corner is weird too, without some ulterior motivation or really extraordinary wanderlust. Weird behavior for a person.

But not, come to think of it, weird behavior for a kid in a kid's museum. In real life, you don't always explore every option because of a vague knowledge that not every option is *for* you. But in a museum (or a playground or a specialty store), if you want to appreciate it fully, you really do look at EVERYTHING that has been created; because you know that you're the real center of the universe and that everything has been created for you. (Much like The Truman Show in a lot of respects, and even *that* world broke in interesting ways when he started exploring it). No one finds it strange for someone to systematically do every possible activity in a place designed for you.

So we have this interesting mixture in games like Deus Ex; there's a world that *professes* to be living and breathing and autonomous, existing for its own sake and giving you a mere place within it. But we know the truth already, that it's All For Us...and it's hard to play along with the ruse. =) In fact it sometimes seems like walking past that line of seemingly-ordinary offices without exploring it would be a BAD thing to do (in the sense of making you a "bad game-player")...because the developers designed each of those offices for you to see, and if you walk past the doors without opening them, that's like throwing part of their creation into the garbage. And you can't say "Well, knowing the office is there is enough" because you don't really know if it's a unique creation until you've looked (in this age of false doors and duplicate dungeons).

I'm not even sure if I consider all this to be a problem (or in which direction I'd consider it to be a problem =). But it's certainly something to think about. And I don't have any general solutions, but I did think of something fun regarding the stealing:

In real life, stealing is a selfish act that takes away things other people would use, because you want to use them instead. It takes a strong imagination to face a (moral or practical) dilemma about in-game burglary, because you know that you are THE ONLY PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE who will ever use that pistol hidden in someone's desk. (Again, it's All For You -- it's not stealing if it's already basically yours!). So what about this...

What if, stealing a pistol or some ammo or a medkit actually affects the NPC who it belonged to? Maybe you steal some ammo from the locker room and then, when it comes time for the siege, all your allies run out of ammo in like 5 seconds and start yelling "Need Ammo!!! Where are my boolets!?" because the boolets are in your cargo pants of infinite capacity. Or you take that pistol from the desk drawer, and you come back later to find out that person was shot to death when the office was raided...or else you find out that by taking the pistol you foiled the plot of someone who was going to go postal. So would you rather steal from your friends to further your goals; or would you rather have friendly NPCs who are well-equipped and happy? It could apply to other items besides weapons of course (consequences that aren't life-and-death but still interesting). Basically the idea being that sometimes, NPCs will act differently if you deprive them of items. (But steal only trivial things, and they may never miss them).

Only example of this behavior I can think of is in Oblivion where you can poison someone by stealing all the unpoisoned food from their house and leaving a poisoned replacement, or some RPGs let you pickpocket someone's weapons before you fight them. You can kind of reverse-burglarize Mr. Renton and Gunther in DX1 by providing them with weapons, too, which is cool...

I don't want to be able to make it to levels I don't have the appropriate player-skill for.

I am not truly afraid this will turn into the same RPG-definition discussion again (partly because I think people are slightly bored of that and will not do it again, and partly because it's not truly frightening ;) but I will still say before it becomes a Thing... Wizardry et al, when Keep says this, or when other people want player skill to play a factor, this does not mean they want to destroy games that are all character-skill. It does mean that they are talking about new ways to mix up the playerskill+characterprogression formula by exploring different links between skill and progression. That is okay, and nobody need be confused or pretend not to know this is a discussion about a particular type of game. =)

Edit: having articulated those silly desires for the discussion about the way we act in games to remain a discussion about suchlike and related topics...I will also say, the idea of not getting to upgrade your skillz until you've mastered other ones, works surprisingly better than it sounds, in Bastion. There, some upgrades and special abilities for a particular weapon are locked until you have completed previous training grounds with that weapon.

Maybe it'd be useful to use different language? We could talk about earning "ranks" in particular weapons or abilities in twitch-based games, as opposed to earning "levels" by gathering generic XP and applying it how you see fit.

Yes...ranks and levels. I have fixed every disagreement forever. ^_^ >_> -_-

I don't see what was wrong with the upgrade system in the original Deus Ex. It didn't try and incentivise a particular course of action, it gave you regular upgrades just through playing the game, but exploration of levels would net you additional rewards. But the exploration was not really tied to stealth like it is in HR. If you wanted to shoot your way through a level you wouldn't come out poorer than if you sneaked through knocking people out. The whole point was playing how you wanted to, rather than playing how the designers decided was worth the most experience, which I think is an important point HR has missed.

There was a major exception with Deus Ex 1, in that it didn't give you any points at all (beyond the basic "progress" XP) for accomplishing a pure stealth run, with no kills or knockouts whatsoever. I seem to recall that The Nameless Mod revamped this by offering you a potentially very large stealth bonus at the end, which was higher the more guards that were still standing and had never seen you.

Now, if exploration experience can only be gained after using skills and augmentations such as swimming and super jumping, the situation would be a whole lot better and make far more sense. If only a character with a high swim skill or aqualung can reach a place which grants exploration XP then you've tested the character in doing so. If you only need to find a vent to get it then how is the character being tested?

But that's not how it works. Think about it. Deus Ex gives you bonus points for exploration and completing missions, just like a lot of old FPSes where you'd find secret areas and finish levels. Difference is that you can then redeem these points for permanent power-ups.

It's roughly the same degree of RPG-ness as OMF2097, where you earn money from fights and upgrade your robot; ie, not very. Deus Ex can be appreciated on its own merits without lamenting that it's not an RPG. As you've said with other games, it's a hybrid, and in this case it's about 90% FPS.

But that's not how it works. Think about it. Deus Ex gives you bonus points for exploration and completing missions, just like a lot of old FPSes where you'd find secret areas and finish levels. Difference is that you can then redeem these points for permanent power-ups.

It's roughly the same degree of RPG-ness as OMF2097, where you earn money from fights and upgrade your robot; ie, not very. Deus Ex can be appreciated on its own merits without lamenting that it's not an RPG. As you've said with other games, it's a hybrid, and in this case it's about 90% FPS.

So what? Gaining experience points in the way I mentioned wouldn't be such a bad thing, surely? I can't think of any negatives whatsoever.

In Paris, there is a house belonging to an out-of-town arms dealer, and it's full of nice and relatively rare things. There is also a "quest" for it, where if you kill some guy, another guy will tell you about the house so you'll know it's worth breaking in to. I think that's how it goes.

The thing is, you have already broken into the house. Of course you have, if you're playing optimally. You broke into that house because it was there, because even if it only has soy food in it, you need to *know*. And you know it'll be a good house to break into, because the door is strong; and of course nobody on Earth buys a strong lock unless it's to give JC Denton a good diversion. So when the guy gives you the tip about the arms dealer, you start to realize that if you were a *normal* person who doesn't eat up every row of offices or houses like a corn-on-the-cob, it would have actually been a really great tip. It would help you locate a useful hotspot in the midst of a normal city.

Great post. I completely agree. I'm obsessive with exploration in games, and the thing is with those like Deus Ex actually reward that behaviour even if it's not "in character". Of course I've entered the arms dealer house (through the window is the best option). Because the game has been telling me that if I can go, something will be waiting there for me. How can you reward exploration without enforcing that kind of behaviour is beyond me.

Originally Posted by Berzee

What if, stealing a pistol or some ammo or a medkit actually affects the NPC who it belonged to?

That's a great idea. You could even stealthy steal all the enemy ammo before a confrontation. Weakening them (like destroying the enemy resource collectors in an RTS).
I'm pretty sure it would be an implementation nightmare though.

So what? Gaining experience points in the way I mentioned wouldn't be such a bad thing, surely? I can't think of any negatives whatsoever.

Just to clarify, your suggestion was (since people seemed to be sad about how sneaking or minmaxing gives you the most XP in DXHR) to just have people gain XP to spend at predetermined stages throughout the game, right?

You're right, I can't think of too much wrong with that. =) In a mostly-FPS game, that's what it ends up feeling like anyway (I just kind of play however and check my skills screen now and then to see if I have played "long enough" to get more upgrades).

Such a terrible idea. Completing that section will always net you the exact same experience, however you do it. So why complicate the level design? Why not just reward the experience once after getting past those three guys? Use the vent, get the experience. Kill the guys, get the experience. Kill the guys and go through the vent, get the experience only once.

The idea here was that taking approach A or approach B might net you different amounts of XP, depending on which one is harder / smarter. But taking approach A and approach B is worth only one of the two.

But yeah, I suspect the "skill cap per area" might be more appropriate here. Let's say the enemies are hard and the vent isn't too tricky to find (say, 100 XP), so the enemies are worth more (say, 50 XP each, 150 total). Put all those skill bonuses under a single cap of 150 XP. Don't make it obvious to the player, just stop giving rewards for any of those once they hit 150.

So here's the possibilites:

Take the vent: 100 XP

Kill / stun the guys: 150 XP

Anything that involves taking the vent and killing / stunning at least one of the guys: 150 XP

Not possible: Take the vent, kill / stun the guys, 250 XP

Problem here is, what happens if the player doesn't find the vent and just stealths past the three guys? Isn't that potentially harder, and potentially worth even more? How do you factor that in?

Maybe the Nameless Mod's approach was best. Stealth bonus for every enemy that remains standing and doesn't see you. It's different than Deus Ex 3's "Ghost" bonus because you get "Ghost" even if you do kill / knock everyone out. If the stealth bonus is a little higher than the XP you would earn for taking them out yourself, then there's a strong incentive to just avoid any enemies you can't directly deal with. At that point, it's an XP vs. loot tradeoff — more XP for avoiding them, but less loot for not looting the bodies.